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RESTAURANT STRATEGY
Your Restaurant Already Has a Brand, You Just Haven’t Defined It
00:17:58
#552 - Your Restaurant Already Has a Brand, You Just Haven’t Defined It ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: RESTAURANT SCALE SECRETSVISIT: https://restaurantscalesecrets.com/Chip This week's episode is brought to you by: OVATIONVISIT: https://ovationup.com/chip/ ***** Every company has a brand, whether you've defined it or not. ***** If you want to snag a copy of Chip's book, The Restaurant Marketing Mindset... CLICK HERE: https://www.therestaurantmarketingmindset.com/ If you're ready to learn more about the P3 Mastermind... CLICK HERE: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/p3-mastermind-program If you want a free 30-day trial of our Restaurant Foundations Membership Site... CLICK HERE: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/Foundations-b If you want to leave a 5-star rating/review on Apple Podcasts... CLICK HERE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/restaurant-strategy/id1457379809
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So much of the work I do, certainly so much of this podcast is really about both personal and professional development. It's about leveling up. It's executive coaching, for lack of a better term. And there's this thing in the coaching circle, and I don't know if you've heard it, but in case you haven't, let me introduce it to you. And if you have heard it, hopefully now this reminds you of it. This idea of have, do, be, right? The most of us think, well, once I have enough money, then I'll be able to do the things I want and I will be happy, right? Once I have this, then I'll be able to do that and then I will be happy or successful or whatever it is. You fill in the blanks. There have, do, be, and actually what the best way to operate in life is to flip those around. Instead of have, do, be, it's be, do, have. I am a happy person who loves to travel. So I do travel, right? And that allows me to have the experiences that travel gives me with my family. That was the paradigm shift that was introduced to me way back in 2016, 17, 18, and really changed the trajectory of my life to make it personal. Have, do, be. And we got it wrong. It's the other way around. So to that end, most owners think that branding is something you do later. They think, okay, right, once I have, then I'll do. Then I will be a brand, an iconic brand, right? That branding is something that comes after all the others stuff, right? After you're bigger, after you have more money, after you hire some big fancy agency, right? The logos, the colors, the fonts, all the taglines. But here is the truth that most owners never realized. Your restaurant already is a brand. Be, right, have to be. Be the thing that you long to be. Just say. Just put your. Just put your flag in the ground and say, we are. We are this iconic brand. It exists whether you say it or not, whether you've defined it or not. The only question is whether you're shaping it intentionally or letting it form by accident. So just like we talk about personal development, I want to talk about brand development on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy. There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking. Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. I am your host, right? It's the restaurant strategy podcast. We put out two episodes every week. We do operations on Monday, marketing on Thursdays. Run a coaching program. I talk about it all the time. I just want to say it short and sweet. If you struggle with profitability, meaning you got a busy restaurant but you're still stuck at 5, 6, 7, 8% profits, I'm here to tell you you deserve 15, 20, 25%. That sounds crazy. Then let's have a conversation about it. I can point to dozens and dozens of testimonials. We've worked with hundreds and hundreds of people over the last five years. If you're ready to make more, get the freedom that you deserve, then I think it's worth a conversation. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com schedule, grab time on the calendar and let's have a conversation. Okay, restaurant owners, you want a steady, predictable flow of new customers, right? If that is the case, then you need to check out Restaurant Scale Secrets. They have a fully done for you marketing system that has already helped tons of restaurants, including more than 50 members of this restaurant strategy community. They work with a ton of my P3 members. I recommend Restaurant Scale Secrets because I know it works. They run meta ads, they run Google Ads, and they have an entire automated system to get people into your orbit and to get them coming in and coming back. The program works. It's why I recommend it not only here, but to all of my P3 members. You get to fill tables and add tens of thousands to top line revenue. So if you're ready to take that whole piece of marketing off your plate and start filling your seats and head to restaurantscalesecrets.com chip book a free discovery call. There's no pressure. Get to meet Monica and her team and you'll see what they do and what they have already done for so many people in this community. Again, restaurantscalesecrets.com chip as always, you'll find that link in the show notes. When we talk about that, you know, have do be and we're gonna reframe it the other way. It's important to understand that brand, right? Your brand. Brand is not what you say. It's what other people say, right? It's what other people expect. And so right from the get go, I want to clear something up, right? Your brand is not your logo. Your brand is not your website. Your brand is not your Instagram grid. Your brand is not even your menu. Your brand is the expectation that a consumer has when they think about coming to your restaurant. Brand is really wrapped up in Expectations. It's what guests believe will happen before they walk through the door. They call that the brand promise, right? So if I've got a an expensive romantic restaurant, then I'm telling you this is going to be the perfect place for you to celebrate a romantic anniversary dinner. And if I don't deliver on that, then I have broken my promise to you as a consumer. My menu, my prices, my lighting, the music, the website, all of that exists to fortify the brand promise. But your brand is the expectation that someone has when they walk in. Your brand is making a promise, whether you realize or not, whether you've articulated it clearly or not. Again, it's what guests believe will happen before they even walk through the door. Will this be easy or stressful? Will this be warm or transactional? Will this feel worth it or risky? See, those beliefs already exist. Ignoring them doesn't make them disappear. It just means you're not in control of them. See, most restaurants let their brand form randomly, right? The here's how accidental brands get creative. And if you've never been deliberate about it, then congratulations, you also have an accidental brand, right? They get created through a few great experiences, but also a few mediocre ones. That gets built by different servers saying different things or different managers enforcing different standards. And see guests stitch all those moments together and they form a belief. When your website doesn't match, your Google page doesn't match the verbiage, your Instagram, it's not cohesive and guests start forming an opinion. In time, that opinion, that belief will become your brand. Not because you chose it, but simply because you allowed it. See, consistency is the foundation of a solid brand. Strong brands are predictable, right? They're not boring, reliable guests know what kind of night this will be, how they'll be treated, what good looks like. From here on out, think about any great restaurant. Think about French Laundry, Think about Budokan, think about Carmines. Think about In N Out Burger. They all have very clearly defined brands. And all the way from super fancy to night clubby to really casual, just in off the street. They're all very, very different. All different markets, all different price points, all different concepts. But they have very clearly defined brands. So again, strong brands feel predictable because guests know what night this will be, how they're going to get treated, and they know what good will look like. On the flip side, inconsistent restaurants feel risky and people don't risk their time lightly anymore. There are way too many restaurants out there, way too many great restaurants out there. We don't have to Take risks. The reality is brand lives in small, repeated moments. Let me just say that again. Your brand lives in the small, repeated moments. It's built in how the phone is answered, how mistakes are handled, how confident your servers sound, how calm managers remain under pressure. These micro moments matter more than some big promotion or some flashy campaign. If it, if you haven't heard this said, let me be the one to say it. Brand is not built once. Brand is built slowly, brick by brick by brick. It is a massive pyramid that takes years or decades to build. Guess what, though? It takes only a moment to crack, to bring it all crashing down. It's not built once. It's built night after night after night. It is reinforced with every course, with every meal, with every repeat visit. Think about a great restaurant that you loved, a restaurant you loved and you went to, and then you were so excited to bring friends and you come in and it doesn't. Doesn't stand up to your expectations. It doesn't stand up to the first visit. This happened and my wife and I went to a place. We loved it. We brought a friend of hers who was in from out of town visiting. We sat down for dinner and it was absolutely flat. The drinks weren't as good as the first time. The portions were smaller. The thin, the one dish, the pork was overcooked. It was like little by little. And then you know what, we felt embarrassed. We basically kept apologizing to this guy because we're the restaurant people, we're the foodies. And he says, well, where should we go? He said, we have a great place to take you. And we felt foolish because it was like, oh, well, this isn't really very good. It was okay. It just wasn't great. It wasn't all that we had been raving about. Again, reinforced nightly, course by course, meal by meal, repeat visit, over repeat visit. And it can come crashing down all at once. Now, do you want to pulse on what's actually happening in your restaurant? Ovation gives you real time understanding about your guest experience, transforming guest feedback into clear, actionable insights so you can stop guessing and start making smarter decisions about your business. Their AI driven reporting breaks down every review into restaurant specific categories like speed of service, order accuracy, or food quality. And it shows you where to actually focus. One operator put it like this. Ovation is a game changer. It helps us identify issues early before they turn into bigger problems. Another operator starts every staff meeting by reviewing recent Ovation data, giving the team one source of truth to work from. With heat maps, goal Tracking and performance dashboards. Ovation doesn't just tell you what's wrong, it actually helps your team fix it. You can even assign action items and track the follow through on those items. So if you want to get all the answers without having to ask all the questions, go to ovationup.com chip to book a demo. Mention this podcast and guess what? They'll waive your setup fee. As always, you'll find that link in the show notes. Most owners, at least most of the owners that I'll meet at trade shows or out at conferences, even some of the ones that come to my conferences, they think branding is marketing's job, right? And this is one of the biggest misunderstandings, something I'm really passionate about because while I'm a restaurant marketer, really, I came at it from operations. My whole career started in operations like 16 years running restaurants. Being on the floor. Brand is not a marketing responsibility. It is a leadership responsibility. Marketing might communicate the brand, but leadership creates it. And your service, your menu, the execution, the operation actually fortifies it over and over and over and over or it doesn't. Meaning if leadership is unclear, then marketing is really just amplifying confusion, right? If marketing says it's one thing, but then the experience says it's something else, well then now there's like dissonance and the guest is going ugh, right now we get back to that brand promise. So marketing can communicate the kind of experience they can expect. And if it doesn't stand up to that, then they go, oh well then there was disappointment, right? Now we've over promised and we've under delivered a defined brand. Think of it this way, makes decisions easier, right? And see, this is an upside that a lot of owners rarely see until we point it out. When the brand is clear, then menu decisions get easier, hiring gets easier, marketing gets easier, standards get easier, right? You stop debating everything. You simply have to ask one simple question. You fit it through the lens. You, you put all of your decisions to through a lens. Does this fit who we are? Who are we? What are we trying to accomplish? And does this get us closer to that? Does this fit in that? Right? So this dish or that dish, it should be really clear. This price or that price, this service flourish or that service, this promotion or that promotion, it should be very, very clear. What happens is then all the other decisions. Remember last time we were talking about meetings and the importance of having many meetings but tighter, more efficient meetings, right? This is the same thing. When everybody can get aligned, we can calibrate the entire team on one thing. Everything gets easier as the undefined brands, they create this internal friction. Meaning when a brand is vague, staff will just naturally pull in different directions. It's like everybody's in a boat and they don't know where to row to. Cause they're all looking at different docks. We need a leader to point to one dock and say, there, we're going there. Everybody row in that direction. So staff will naturally pull in different directions. Managers will prioritize differently, meaning one will prioritize this, another will prioritize that. Because really clear priorities have not been set. And we've talked about this before, but again, guests get mixed signals. So what happens? Friction increases, stress increases, and guess what? Profit, my favorite word, profit decreases. See, clarity is the thing that calms everybody, everything. And a brand is nothing if not clarity, right? Clarity on who we are, what we do, who we're for, why we exist. The end of the day, you don't need a cool brand. You just need a clear one. I see most owners, and again, maybe some of you guys are guilty out there. They. They chase esthetics, right? That's actually backwards. Because cool brands fade, clear brands endure. Clarity is the thing that creates trust. Trust creates loyalty. Right? Loyalty. Not a loyalty program. That's just a rewards. That's how to gamify people coming there and spending money there. But real loyalty is when we rely on each other. I have this restaurant and I rely on you being loyal, and they rely on me to be consistent. So again, don't think so much about the aesthetics, right? If you want a comfortable place, then by all means, make a comfortable place. There's a lot of ways to do that. What's most important is that you communicate comfort, ease, peace. That is all really, really important. And then the operation just should just exist to fortify that. Don't chase the aesthetics, don't be cool, don't put the fancy dining room. All of that will fade. It will be tired. It will be dated. Cool brands fade. Clear brands are the ones that endure. And again, here's the real shift. Brand is not what you want to be known for. It's what you actually are consistently known for. And see, defining it doesn't restrict you. In fact, it does the opposite. It frees you. So what I want you to do, I want you to answer the following question honestly. What do guests expect expect will happen here? And are we delivering that consistently? That answer is actually your brand? Again, I'll repeat this. What do guests expect will happen here during a meal and are we delivering that consistently? The answer to that is your brand. At the end of the day you don't need to create a brand. You need to stop pretending that you don't already have one. As always, I appreciate you guys taking time out of your week to be here to sit and listen to what I have to say. I hope some of this helps. If this helps, if you haven't done this yet, please take two minutes, go to Apple Podcasts, leave us a five star rating and review. By all means. If you don't like the show, I don't want you to lie, but if you get any sort of value from the show, take two minutes, go to Apple Podcasts, five star rating and review. Just let other people know what you get out of this. That more than just about anything else will help us. Thank you very much guys and I will see you on the next one.